Next door

To the Editor:

As I watched the news from Connecticut, I was struck how similar Woodstock, where I live, is to Newtown. Both towns have populations around 25,000. Both towns are about 60 miles from a major U.S. city. Both towns are relatively sleepy suburbs with low crime rates.

Miserably, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how Woodstock’s schools could be the site of something terrible someday.

As a community, as a nation, as citizens, we must use this crisis as a spark to come together in deeds and words to turn these sickening slaughters around. Whether through tighter gun laws, better enforcement of existing laws, a dedication to funding mental health resources (even if the state has to raise taxes, borrow money, or have a bake sale in Springfield to fund it), we can’t pretend we’re any safer than 20 first-graders were on a sunny Friday in New England.

President Barack Obama visited Newtown to help the victims’ families grieve. May he never have a reason to come here. According to Google, Newtown is about 900 miles from Woodstock. The events of Dec. 14 moved it next door.